I'll tell you something new: For the first time in five years of testing, Telus is Canada's Fastest Mobile Network. The third-largest Canadian carrier is now number one with a bullet, winning a tight battle with Bell for overall performance, sweeping the country's major cities and winning our population-weighted Speed Score.

This year was Canada's 150th birthday, and we wanted to give the country a present by delivering our first truly coast-to-coast drive test, covering all 10 provinces. We hit major cities and selected small towns everywhere from St. John's to Victoria, measuring speeds on Bell, Rogers, Telus, Eastlink, Freedom, MTS, and Videotron.

Nationwide Winner: Telus

Bell

Rogers

Telus

Maximum Download Speed (Mbps)

431.48

375.87

479.94

Average Download Speed (Mbps)

99.03

50.69

102.12

Downloads Above 5Mbps (%)

98%

98%

98%

Maximum Upload Speed (Mbps)

67.38

66.80

66.53

Average Upload Speed (Mbps)

25.47

23.46

28.12

Uploads Over 2Mbps (%)

96%

97%

97%

Average Ping (ms)

44.53

53.75

37.85

Time on LTE (%)

100%

99%

100%

Speed Score (out of 100)

97

85

100

We found significant differences between provinces, and between small towns and big cities. While Telus rules in big cities, Bell dominates midsize Ontario cities and Atlantic Canada, and Videotron still plays well in smaller Quebec cities.

Telus and Bell share most of their radio network. Over the past few years, Telus has evened the score with Bell first by getting access to its Band 7 spectrum in 2015, and then matching it on carrier aggregation this year. The difference between the two networks then becomes their core network design—the lines that come down from the towers, and their connections to the internet. In 2017, it looks like Telus has done a lot of work optimizing its core network in the big cities where the most Canadians live, giving them the fastest possible connections.

Rogers appears to be at least a generation behind Bell and Telus on network technology, and it's dragging Videotron (which shares its network) with it. You can see this by looking at maximum speeds: Bell and Telus frequently have double the maximum speeds Rogers does.

These breathtaking speeds are dependent on current-edge technologies that might not be in your phone, though. To get top speeds on Canadian carriers, you need four-carrier aggregation, 256-QAM encoding, and 4×4 MIMO antennas, which are together called gigabit LTE. Those features are currently available only on the HTC U11, LG V30, Moto Z2 Force, Samsung Galaxy Note 8, Samsung Galaxy S8, and Sony Xperia XZ1, although more phones with these features will be coming out later this year. iPhones are likely to be stuck in a slightly slower lane until 2018.

In our US story, we profiled how your phone choice makes a difference on download and upload speeds. You'll see even more dramatic differences in Canada, as these technologies have been more comprehensively rolled out here than in the US.

Great Leaps Forward

Canadian wireless speeds, and LTE availability, have increased by leaps and bounds since our first tests in 2013. And since many Canadians are still on two-year contracts, you may not be aware of the huge changes in networks since 2014.

Rogers was the early leader with LTE in Canada, and its 2011 launch left the other carriers scrambling to catch up. But they did catch up, starting in 2015. Bell's activation of high-speed Band 7 networks in major cities, and its aggressive approach to carrier aggregation (which binds together different bands of spectrum so they appear to be one broad highway), made Bell competitive with Rogers in 2015 and pushed it ahead in 2016. Telus trailed behind for a while, but getting full access to that Band 7, plus a year's worth of network optimization has really helped it in 2017.

All this goes to say that the Canadian carriers are competitive, and living up to their promises when it comes to network rollouts. The state of Canadian LTE is strong. As always, the country's competitive weakness isn't in low quality, but in high prices.

Freedom: The One to Watch

Freedom Wireless, the former Wind Mobile, is the potential game changer in this year's results. Freedom is in the middle of turning on its LTE network, and in Toronto, several southern Ontario cities, and Edmonton, it comes close to matching Rogers' speeds.

Our Freedom results show that its owner, Shaw, still has some work to do. In Toronto, Freedom's 4G LTE network was 10 percent less reliable than Bell's. In Calgary, it was 20 percent less reliable. In Hamilton, it was 30 percent less reliable. Ouch. Most of the time, when our Freedom device fell off of LTE, it didn't lose signal entirely; it reverted to Wind's previous 3G network. But Canadians now expect nearly complete LTE coverage in major cities, and Freedom must deliver.

That said, Freedom is charging half of what the three big networks do for a 6GB plan. If you stay almost entirely in its coverage area (as its most popular $49 plan has voice, but not data, outside its limited range), that's a great deal. Videotron recently sold some more spectrum to Shaw, which (unlike Wind) is a big enough company to actually afford to build out a network. That's very encouraging, and users in those big cities looking for a deal should definitely think of switching to Freedom.

While regional carriers have done very well in our past tests, they just haven't been improving as fast as Bell and Telus have. MTS (now owned by Bell) showed very similar performance to last year, but Bell's average download speeds in Winnipeg tripled thanks to new carrier aggregation technology. In Montreal, Videotron got a little faster, but once again, Bell and Telus got a lot faster. The same story also plays itself out with Eastlink in Nova Scotia.

Where's Unlimited?

There's a revolution sweeping US wireless carriers. It's called unlimited, and our results show that Canada's networks can handle it. Canadian carriers just aren't pressuring each other to go there.

Canada's notoriously high wireless rates haven't changed much over the past year. That's interesting because the competitive landscape has changed. Freedom is much more competitive than Wind was, and MTS's performance is really declining. But that hasn't lowered the Big Three's rates in Calgary, or raised them in Winnipeg.

Meanwhile, in the US, carriers are by and large switching over to unlimited plans. These aren't really unlimited; they start to throttle after 22GB or so. But for $100 to $105 Canadian, US subscribers are getting triple the data the Big Three are offering up north.

The US also has a thriving marketplace of virtual carriers with super-cheap plans for less-heavy users. Canada has, well, Chatr, which is reasonably priced but nowhere near as flexible as US value leaders like US Mobile, Ting, and Twigby.

According to a 2016 CRTC report, wireless prices have been flat or in slight decline in Canada over the past few years, with costs dropping most sharply in Montreal because of an ongoing price war involving the Big Three and Videotron. At the moment, 6GB plans in Quebec are running as low as $49 per month, or half of what they cost in Ontario.

One thing to understand about speed test results is that speed is also a proxy for capacity. Carriers can choose to offer a few users very fast connections, or slow everyone down a bit so they all share.

The stunning speeds that Bell and Telus are showing in major Canadian cities—often double the speeds of US carriers—tell us that their networks have headroom. The price war in Quebec shows that they're willing to lower rates if pushed. The carriers will disagree with both of these assertions, probably citing crowdsourced reports showing that AT&T and Verizon's speeds have declined since the introduction of unlimited plans.

But the story in the US is more complicated than that. First of all, that same report shows Sprint and T-Mobile's speeds continue to rise, even with unlimited plans and T-Mobile's dramatic subscriber growth. AT&T's decline may be thanks to a new discounted plan capped at 3Mbps; Verizon's might come from throttling heavy data users. Our Fastest Mobile Networks drive tests in May, on the other hand, showed that AT&T's and Verizon's uncapped speeds are better, not worse, than last year's.

We respectfully disagree with the carriers that they can't offer bigger, cheaper plans to Canadian consumers. Now, Canada only needs an "un-carrier" to push things forward. Perhaps Freedom is up to the task.

Check Also

With the explosion of streaming services now available, it’s becoming more difficult to figure out not just what movie or TV show to watch next, but where you can actually watch it. Google today is rolling out its solution to this problem with a significant revamp of its Google Play Movies & TV app and an update to the Google Play Store itself that will show you which streaming services have the content available, in addition to whether it’s available for rent or purchase, as before.
The end result is something that’s similar to Apple’s own TV app, which combines users’ own library of movies and TV with the ability to seek out what’s trending and available in the world of online video.
In the updated Google Play Movies & TV app, you’ll now find three tabs in the new bottom navigation bar which will direct you to your Home, Library or your Watchlist. The watchlist is a feature the app recently gained as well, but now it has a much more prominent position.
As you browse through the app, you can click on titles to read more about them, as before, but now you’re also able to see where the item can be streamed.
At launch, Google is working with 28 streaming services whose content libraries are now integrated in Google Play Movies & TV. That’s fewer than Apple’s TV app supports, which is currently over 60.
But it will find content even if it’s an exclusive to the streaming provider, and not necessarily something Google has for rent or sale. That means you can find original programming – like Amazon’s “The Man in the High Castle” – and then start watching it on the streaming service that hosts it.
“We deeplink right into playback for that [third-party streaming] app,” explains Ben Serridge, the product manager for the Movies & TV app at Google. “So if I wanted to start watching ‘The Good Doctor’ pilot, I press the play button and it goes into the ABC app and start playback.”
Beyond the big names, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video, the app also pulls in content from ABC, CBS, FOX NOW, NBC, HBO NOW, HBO Go, Showtime, Showtime Anytime, Max Go, Starz, Disney Now, HGTV, BET Now, Comedy Central, A&E, Cooking Channel, Crackle, DIY Network, Food Network, History, Lifetime, MTV, The CW, Travel Channel, Tubi TV and VH1.
Notably missing is Netflix, whose content is searchable in Apple’s TV app.
Serridge didn’t explain why it’s missing, saying only that “we would very much like to have all the apps that distribute this kind of content on Play participating” – effectively tossing the ball back to Netflix’s court.
Even without Netflix, the feature is useful if not comprehensive. It will show you the services hosting the content, whether it’s freely available to stream, if you need a subscription (as with HBO Now), the associated costs, or if you need to login with pay TV credentials to watch.
This is especially helpful because some of the network TV apps offer a teaser of a show with a few free episodes, but not complete seasons. The Google Play Movies & TV app will help you track down the rest elsewhere, if need be.
The app will also now help you narrow down searches thanks to a robust filtering system that lets you click on tags by genre, mood, decade, and more. For example, you could click on “Family,” “Drama,” Award winning,” Highly rated,” Comedy,” and other filters.
In addition to helping you find content, stream it, or add it to your Watchlist, the app includes personalized recommendations. These will be partly based on items you’ve previously watched, but you can also explicitly signal your interest or distste as well, by clicking on the thumbs up or thumbs down button. The thumbs down will remove the item from your suggestions entirely.
Outside the app itself, the Play Store is being updated to show you the same information about content availability.
Solutions like the new Google Play Movies & TV app and Apple’s TV app are handy in the cord cutting era where content is spread out across networks, services, and other over-the-top offerings. But even these apps aren’t enough. Not only is Netflix missing from Google’s app, so is its own YouTube original content – and that’s the same company!
Also not addressed by either Apple or Google’s app are which shows may be available to stream or record via live TV services like YouTube TV, Hulu Live TV, PlayStation Vue, DirecTV Now, and Sling TV. (Although, to be fair, that’s not only a different set of services, it’s also a much larger challenge given that broadcast network availability varies by market. A dedicated solution like Suppose.tv or Fomopop’s live TV finder may work better.)
Meanwhile, there are other tools for finding and tracking favorite shows, like Reelgood or TV Time (or a jailbroken Fire TV stick we should admit), but they don’t have the the benefit of matching content from a rent-and-buy marketplace like Google Play, or being available across phone, tablet, and desktop web, like Google Play.
Google says the new features will roll out to Android phones and tablets in the U.S. over the next few days.

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